Google will invest a further $1 billion in AI startup Anthropic

Google has announced plans to increase its investment in Anthropic following Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) approval of its last tie-up with the company.

The hyperscaler will now invest over $1 billion into the AI firm, according to reports from the Financial Times.

This follows reports earlier in the month that suggested Anthropic is in a bid to raise an additional $2 billion as part of a funding round undertaken with VC firm Lightspeed Venture Partners, according to Reuters.

Google’s investment is not part of this funding round though. ITPro has approached both Anthropic and Google for clarification but both declined to comment.

This is not the first time Google has pledged its backing for Anthropic, nor is it the first sign of interest the industry has shown towards the startup.

While Microsoft is focused on OpenAI, Anthropic seems to have gained the interest of both Google and AWS.

Google pledged $2 billion in funding for the firm in 2023, though in July last year the CMA announced it would be probing the deal to establish whether it constituted a merger.

This prompted criticism from the Computer & Communications Industry Association (CCIA), with the body’s senior UK director Matthew Sinclair arguing that the move could damage the UK’s standing in the AI space. The CMA has since cleared the deal.

AWS has also shown interest in Anthropic, first announcing an investment of $4 billion into the firm as part of a bid to improve and bolster AWS’ Bedrock service.

More recently, AWS doubled down on this investment, committing a further $4 billion to the AI developer in a move that made AWS the primary cloud provider and training partner for Anthropic.

AWS said the move will improve the performance, security, and privacy that Amazon Bedrock provides for customers running Anthropic’s Claude models.